The Beauty of the Pandanus Palm

I grew up with Pandanus palm – a tree that provides fruit, palm for house posts, leaves for mat and sometimes roofing. But, what I always remember and appreciate is the beauty of the palm trunk and leaves. The fruit itself is something else. It looks like a spike ball, full of sweetness. It could be an alien seed or lamp from another world.

This is the only picture I didn’t take. Courtesy of Wikipedia Pictures to show you the fruit of this palm – Pandanus utilis.

Yesterday, during a quick trip to the coast, I felt myself drawn to the Pandanus palm with my camera.

Hahaha – yes Millie – you know certain Pandanus fruit are quite sweet, and when I was younger and in my fishing days, we would pick the single seeds out of the water just suck on them for the sweetness/sugar and I guess energy. It was always a race with the insects.

Furthest South I made was Singapore when I did Myanmar (Burma) / Thailand / Malaysia / Singapore (coincidentally, my wife also worked in Singapore for six months before going to UAE where she was unlucky enough to meet and marry me LOLOL) 🐵

In 1971, I had little in a rented house and used the pandanus fruit ( already in red ) as a table decoration. The table itself was just 2 lengths of plywood covered with green satin cloth and thumbed tacked. This was my setup for Christmas for the 2 of us ( of course much younger by 50 years )……I walked along the deserted small island beach where I was stationed as an army officer and picked one up from the many pandanus plants there….the memory of a simple setup is still there.